Interplay of Tradition and Modernity: An Ironic Study of Forster's A Passage to India

Abstract

Edward Morgan Forster's ironic observation of British and Indian ways of life in A Passage to India is notable for its use of multiple perspectives: Forster employs the shifting viewpoints to portray the English and Indian characters, writing his story across the lines of difference of race, religion, gender, and culture. Here he takes the relations between the English and the Indians and ironizes upon the possibility and limitations, the promises and the pitfalls, of human relationships, judging independently as a liberal humanist. Hence neither English nor Indians are spared: there is a kind of comic act mitigaing the tragic undertones in the novel. Forster's irony is directed at Indian tradition from the viewpoint of British modernity and also at England from the prospective of traditional India. Forster privileges Indian life and culture even as he stereotypes India and the Indians along with the British. He shows his ambivalent attitude towards British and Indian life and culture by simultaneously stereotyping and privileging the different aspects of their culture, traditions and customs.